[Fan Yue]: @Cicada, @Orange, have you arrived yet? I’m at the airport.
[Orange]: ? Didn’t Cicada tell you? We’re arriving at three in the morning.
[Cicada]: My bad, I forgot. I edited the message this afternoon but forgot to hit send.
[Fan Yue]: Three in the morning??? What kind of plane are you taking that the flight takes so long?
[Orange]: We didn’t take a plane.
[Fan Yue]: ?
[Orange]: We took the train. It feels more like traveling that way, and we got to enjoy the scenery along the way.
[Cicada]: Exactly. Trains are great.
[Fan Yue]: …Your way of thinking really is as strange as ever.
Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan traveled north all the way. With the train running late as well, it was almost four in the morning by the time they reached their final destination. Near the seats by the station’s exit, they found Fan Yue sleeping soundly.
“Happy birthday!” The two of them, full of energy, shook Fan Yue awake. “We’re here!”
Fan Yue: “…”
These two seemed far too energetic to have just completed a long-distance journey. Compared to them, he, the person who had fallen asleep at the train station, was the one whose condition seemed abnormal.
“Are you two not tired?” Fan Yue reasonably voiced his confusion.
“It’s all right,” Luo Zhiyu said. “It’s not a holiday, so there weren’t too many people. We had snacks and instant noodles the whole way. My family doesn’t let me eat instant noodles at home.”
Fan Yue nudged Xiao Yan with his elbow and pointed at his own neck, signaling for Xiao Yan to look at Luo Zhiyu. Xiao Yan understood, unwound the scarf around his own neck, pulled Luo Zhiyu closer, and wrapped it around him.
“That’s what you get for biting me again yesterday…” Luo Zhiyu rubbed his neck, then wrapped the scarf around himself properly.
Actually, if they traced things back to the root of the problem, this incident should have been Luo Zhiyu’s fault. Before they set off yesterday, Luo Zhiyu had finished scrolling through Weibo and reading netizens’ discussions about a certain topic. On a sudden whim, he decided to test his boyfriend’s self-control. While Xiao Yan was packing their luggage, Luo Zhiyu followed the steps suggested by the netizens and deliberately stirred things up.
The result proved that the top student with the orange-scented pheromones had absolutely no self-control when it came to him. Not only had Luo Zhiyu ended up covered in a fresh orange scent, but he had also acquired several hickeys on his neck.
And—
By the time they leisurely made their way to the airport, the plane had already taken off.
“So, even though we knew we were going to miss the flight, why did we still go to the airport? Were we just giving up because there was nothing we could do about it?” Luo Zhiyu asked lazily from his seat on top of Xiao Yan’s suitcase. His eyes were still a little red, and his voice was several degrees softer than usual.
Xiao Yan had planned to buy tickets for the next flight. But then Luo Zhiyu had another sudden whim, and the two of them turned around and went to the train station instead.
That was why they had appeared in this city in the middle of the night.
“I’m too tired to criticize you two anymore. You missed your flight, yet you still had the nerve to tell me you wanted to enjoy the scenery along the way.” Fan Yue had heard this bizarre story from their conversation all the way through. “Your way of thinking is just as unconventional as ever.”
“How was my thinking unconventional before?” Luo Zhiyu asked curiously. “Tell me.”
“Huh? Haven’t I told you?” Fan Yue asked. “Back when Xiao Yan wanted to pursue you, he was probably a little concerned about your pheromones. He mysteriously dragged me up to the rooftop and asked whether it was possible for one Alpha to get together with another Alpha. He scared the hell out of me.”
Luo Zhiyu: “…”
“No wonder you looked a little horrified when I asked whether it was possible for one Omega to get together with another Omega.” Luo Zhiyu remembered what had happened back then. “Now that you mention it, I think I understand.”
Fan Yue: “…Forget I said anything. You and my deskmate are both equally wild in the way you do things.”
A taxi ride of less than half an hour from the station took them to the night market near Fan Yue’s university. It was past four in the morning, and the sky was still dark, but the various food stalls were still fairly lively. Zhang Shu and Tang Yuan waved to them from the roadside. Tang Yuan was even wearing his pajamas and slippers.
“I’m so sleepy. Why did you come at this hour?” Tang Yuan complained mournfully. “I was sleeping so soundly when Fan Yue called to tell me you had arrived.”
“Quick, praise me! It took me so much effort to drag Tang Yuan out of bed. The big Alpha was sleeping like a log.” Zhang Shu had certainly done his best.
After wiping the table with a tissue, Luo Zhiyu claimed a seat. Watching Fan Yue skillfully scribble down their orders on the menu, he guessed that Fan Yue must come here often.
Back when they were at No. 1 High School, the few of them had often gotten together, and Luo Zhiyu had joined in plenty of times. But back then, they had all still worn their youthful school uniforms. Now, the same group of people had reunited in another northern city. They had all shed their school uniforms and taken on new identities, yet traces of their younger selves could still be seen in each of them.
The city was unfamiliar, and the accents of the people around them were unfamiliar, too. But perhaps because of the people sitting around the table, Luo Zhiyu didn’t feel the awkwardness of being somewhere new.
The atmosphere at the night market near the university was wonderful. Most of the people scattered around the nearby tables were students from surrounding schools. Some people cast glances in their direction, seemingly a little envious of the lively group at their table.
Xiao Yan shifted closer to Luo Zhiyu and draped an arm over his shoulder, blocking the view from the neighboring table.
“Brother Yan can be pretty clingy sometimes, can’t he?” Zhang Shu laughed at the sight. “Does Luo Zhiyu get annoyed with him?”
“He’s more difficult to deal with during his rut. Otherwise, he’s fine.” Whenever Xiao Yan went into rut, Luo Zhiyu’s own temper would flare up, too. In the end, the two of them would coax each other, and everything would be fine.
Speaking of that, Luo Zhiyu was reminded of the mess before their trip.
“Everything else is fine. It’s just this self-control issue…”
As soon as he finished speaking, Xiao Yan slipped a hand inside his scarf and rubbed his neck again. Luo Zhiyu nimbly dodged to one side.
“Xiao Yan, hands off. Stop bullying Luo Zhiyu.” Fan Yue, both Xiao Yan’s deskmate and the oldest among them, finally spoke up. “You worked so hard to win him over in the first place.”
“It was pretty easy, actually. Ask him if you don’t believe me.” Luo Zhiyu tapped his bowl. “He used tricks on me.”
“Come to think of it, all of us are ‘responsible’ for the two of you ending up together.” As they chatted, the topic circled back to this matter. “Back then, nobody believed it would happen. We all thought you two were impossible. Even when we were taking measurements for the uniforms, Xiao Yan was the first one we sent in.”
It was as though everyone had given the two of them a little push from behind.
“So everyone kept saying we were absolutely pure, absolutely safe, and absolutely incapable of having any improper thoughts, huh? Sorry for betraying everyone’s trust.” Luo Zhiyu remembered it all very clearly. “Our pheromones said so, and everyone around us said so, too. Yet we went completely against all of that. Especially Brother Yan. He even said something about hard work making up for a lack of talent, and he certainly took plenty of advantage of me.”
Tang Yuan: “So, about that pheromone compatibility test report with the incorrect results back then…”
“I accidentally lost mine. Xiao Yan kept his, and he even gave a photocopy to Director Wu for the archives. The School of Life Sciences asked for a copy, too,” Luo Zhiyu said. “At the time, I thought it was ridiculous. Looking at it now, our compatibility wasn’t actually zero…”
“Our pheromones never said we were impossible,” Xiao Yan said. “They were only saying that there are infinitely many possibilities between Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan.”